ART GALLERIES FIGHT TO REOPEN
Galeries Bartoux supports the action of the Professional Committee of Art Galleries which has just lodged an appeal so that art galleries are included among the establishments authorised to receive the public in the same way as auction houses or bookshops.
–
The Comité Professionnel des Galeries d’Art (Professional Committee of Art Galleries) lodged an appeal with the Conseil d’Etat on Thursday 25 March in response to the provisions of Decree no. 2021-296 of 19 March 2021, so that, on the one hand, art galleries are included among the establishments authorised to receive the public – in the same way as voluntary sales companies – and, on the other hand, that their activity falls within the scope of those permitting the reception of the public, in the same way as bookshops and record shops.
Since 28 November 2020, art galleries have been one of the very few places to participate in maintaining artistic and cultural life in France in the service of greater accessibility to culture.
The CPGA therefore denounces a general and absolute ban on art galleries which seriously undermines several fundamental freedoms: freedom of expression and the free communication of ideas, freedom of artistic creation and dissemination, and freedom of access to cultural and artistic works, as well as freedom of enterprise and freedom of trade and industry and the right to the free exercise of a profession, all informed by the principle of equality.
